Professor Brian Codding Publishes Article in Human Ecology

Australia's Aboriginal Martu people hunt kangaroos and set small grass fires to catch
lizards, as they have for at least 2,000 years. The Department of Anthropology's Brian
Codding found such man-made disruption boosts kangaroo populations – showing how co-evolution
helped marsupials and made Aborigines into unintentional conservationists.

"We have uncovered a framework that allows us to predict when human subsistence practices
might be detrimental to the environment and when they might be beneficial," says Professor
Codding. "When subsistence practices have long histories, they are more likely to
sustain ecosystem stability," he says. "But when there are sudden changes to the way
people make a living on the land, expect the result to be detrimental to the environment."